# Lion Air crash - similar to Silk Air 185? (Murder suicidel
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [November 4, 2018, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960 "2018-11-04T04:10:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2018, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/1 "2018-11-04T04:10:23Z")
Seeing as there is no thread about the Boeing 737 that went down in Indonesian waters, killing 189:
> **[Main wreckage of Lion Air jet found, diver dies in search - Taipei Times](https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/11/04/2003703571)**
>
> Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan
There are some similarities to the Silk Air 185 crash two decades ago - both a Boeing 737 that nosedived suddenly and hit the water at high speed. This Indonesian 737, in particular, was extremely modern - only delivered by Boeing a few months ago - and it seems highly unlikely that something like metal fatigue would be the cause. No doubt such a 737 of this modern type would be replete with safety features.
The AirAsia crash a couple years ago was a stall; this one nosedived, so it’s not a stall.
Seem like possible deliberate action?
---
### Author:  [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2018, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/2 "2018-11-04T05:31:25Z")
It had been snagged with unreliable airspeed and altitude indications the previous day. Occam’s razor would suggest a mishandled technical fault rather than anything else. There is a massive PPRuNe thread if you have the patience to wade through it. I don’t.
---
### Author:  [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2018, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/3 "2018-11-04T12:48:59Z")
Information about the Lion Air crash is a bit sketchy at this point.
One report said that the pilot reported flight control problems and was unsure of his own altitude. This report did not come from any official source. The NTSB has said that this report has “similarities” with information that they have received. Even though the crash happened in Indonesia, the NTSB is involved since the plane was made in the U.S. and is flying in the U.S. as well.
There’s not much official information (and probably won’t be until they get a little further along in the investigation), but what little we have seems to point to a technical issue, not an intentional crash.
---
### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/4 "2018-11-05T15:35:07Z")
> [@](#):
>
> The “black box” data recorder from a crashed Lion Air jet shows\*\* its airspeed indicator malfunctioned on its last four flights\*\*, investigators said Monday, just hours after distraught relatives of victims confronted the airline’s co-founder at a meeting organized by officials.
>
> National Transportation Safety Committee chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono said the problem was similar on each of the four flights, including the fatal flight on Oct. 29 in which the plane plunged into the Java Sea minutes after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.
> **[Lion Air jet’s airspeed indicator malfunctioned on 4 flights](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/11/05/lion-air-crash-plane-had-airspeed-problem-4-flights/1889396002/)**
>
> Lion Air has said a technical problem with the jet was fixed after problems with the Bali to Jakarta flight.
---
### Author:  [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2018, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/5 "2018-11-06T12:35:35Z")
When I lived in Indonesia, Lion Air had a terrible reputation. The US government forbade its staff or any of its contractors from flying on Lion Air because of safety concerns.
---
### Author:  [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2018, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/6 "2018-11-07T03:07:48Z")
Possibly the same problem that other tropical locations have had of insects getting into the probes for the airspeed and other instrumentation. If the ground crew forgot to check before flight, that could be the cause of bad instrument readings.
---
### Author:  [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2018, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/7 "2018-11-07T06:49:18Z")
From the Seattle Times: [Boeing to warn 737 MAX operators of a potential instrument failure that could cause the jet to nose-dive](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-to-warn-737-max-operators-of-a-potential-instrument-failure-that-could-cause-the-jet-to-nose-dive/).
So at least to this layman it is looking less and less like an intentional act.
---
### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2018, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/8 "2018-11-17T00:38:44Z")
Here is a description of the non-intuitive instructions (which the pilots didn’t know about and hadn’t been trained on) to fix the problem:
> **[What the Lion Air Pilots May Have Needed to Do to Avoid a Crash (Published 2018)](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/16/world/asia/lion-air-crash-cockpit.html)**
>
> The rapid series of steps that may have been needed to save the plane were not in the manual, and the pilots had not been trained on them.
---
### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2018, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/9 "2018-11-20T20:31:15Z")
And a Youtube video of someone explaining it:
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus)
---
### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/10 "2019-02-03T15:18:56Z")
> [@](#):
>
> But the tragedy has become a focus of intense interest and debate in aviation circles because of another factor: the determination by Boeing and the F.A.A. that pilots did not need to be informed about a change introduced to the 737’s flight control system for the Max, some software coding intended to automatically offset the risk that the size and location of the new engines could lead the aircraft to stall under certain conditions. That judgment by Boeing and its regulator was at least in part a result of the company’s drive to minimize the costs of pilot retraining. And it appears to have left the Lion Air crew without a full understanding of how to address a malfunction that seems to have contributed to the crash: faulty data erroneously indicating that the plane was flying at a dangerous angle, leading the flight control system to repeatedly push the plane’s nose down…
>
> Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually. That feature was disabled on the Max when M.C.A.S. was activated — another change that pilots were unlikely to have been aware of. After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when M.C.A.S. is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop so-called stabilizer runaway. The preliminary results of the investigation, based on information from the flight data recorder, suggested that the pilots of the doomed flight tried a number of ways to pull the nose back up as it lurched down more than two dozen times. That included activating switches on the control yoke that control the angle of the stabilizers on the plane’s tail — and when that failed to stop the problem, pulling back on the yoke.
> **[After a Lion Air 737 Max Crashed in October, Questions About the Plane Arose...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html)**
>
> The story of a modification to the Boeing 737’s flight control system shows how competitive pressures and technological complexity can affect airliner safety.
---
### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2019, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/11 "2019-02-03T15:32:32Z")
The cockpit voice recorder was only retrieved [about two weeks ago.](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/world/asia/indonesia-lion-air-voice-recorder.html?module=inline) Analysis should tell us a lot about the OP’s question. If a voice is heard saying, “I rely on Allah,” there’s your answer.
---
### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2019, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/12 "2019-02-04T12:42:12Z")
Musicat, I know you’re being funny, but this was no suicide. It’s very clear what happened: there used to be TWO ways to disengage the auto-trim (pull back on the yoke, or push a particular button) — just like a car’s cruise control can be disengaged by stepping on the brake, or pushing a button — and now there’s just one way (the button).
The Times article is well written and makes some good points, but I have to say, the pilots should have remembered the “button” option, instead of just trying the “pull back on the yoke” option over and over. Indeed, different pilots flying the same plane had done just that, the previous day (or maybe it was even earlier that same day).
---
### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2019, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/13 "2019-02-04T13:43:15Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#):
>
> The Times article is well written and makes some good points, but I have to say, the pilots should have remembered the “button” option, instead of just trying the “pull back on the yoke” option over and over. Indeed, different pilots flying the same plane had done just that, the previous day (or maybe it was even earlier that same day).
Certain pilots, like anyone else, can get stupid in a crisis. When [AF447 pancaked into the Atlantic](https://www.tailstrike.com/010609.html) ten years ago, part of the problem was the crew’s response to the aircraft malfunction. The biggest problem was the copilot persistently pulling back on the stick, maintaining a deep stall, even after the captain instructed him to stop doing so.
Perhaps part of professional pilot training/screening ought to include (more?) rigorous testing of how they handle themselves in a crisis.
---
### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2019, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/14 "2019-02-04T15:47:08Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#):
>
> Perhaps part of professional pilot training/screening ought to include (more?) rigorous testing of how they handle themselves in a crisis.
Don’t airline pilots get tested twice a year in simulators for a panoply of emergency situations?
---
### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2019, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/15 "2019-02-04T18:10:40Z")
> [@Velocity](#):
>
> Don’t airline pilots get tested twice a year in simulators for a panoply of emergency situations?
I hope one of our resident airline pilots will reply to this. If so, do those emergency simulations include just basic things like losing an engine during/after takeoff? Or does it include bizarro stuff like this Lion Air crash, or [AF447’s loss of airspeed sense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447), or [Air Transat 236’s peculiar fuel leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236), or [United 232’s total loss of hydraulic pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)? The latter group would be the kind of emergency where the crew initially has no idea what the hell is going on, and has to work together within a very limited amount of time to correctly understand the situation and take steps to mitigate/solve the problem. the Lion Air crew crew couldn’t solve their problem in time, and neither could the Air France crew. The Air Transat crew misunderstood their situation, but got through by the skin of their teeth. The United crew quickly understood their problem and worked together to mitigate it, and they are credited with saving 2/3 of the lives on that flight. Simulations of those sorts of crises would show which pilots are capable of working effectively under pressure with their fellow crew members, which ones have the ability to mitigate the effects of [the many cognitive biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) that hinder effective problem-solving, and so on.
---
### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2019, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/16 "2019-02-04T18:23:44Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#):
>
> I hope one of our resident airline pilots will reply to this. If so, do those emergency simulations include just basic things like losing an engine during/after takeoff? Or does it include bizarro stuff like this Lion Air crash, or [AF447’s loss of airspeed sense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447), or [Air Transat 236’s peculiar fuel leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236), or [United 232’s total loss of hydraulic pressure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)?
Getting UA232 down with anything better than total loss of life was quite remarkable. The key to that was the assistance of Fitch, the off-duty DC-10 instructor who happened to be among that passengers, and notably:
> [@](#):
>
> He had learned of the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, caused by a catastrophic loss of hydraulic control, and had wondered if it was possible to control an aircraft using throttles only. **He had practiced under similar conditions on a simulator.**
> **[United Airlines Flight 232](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)**
>
> United Airlines Flight 232 was a regularly scheduled United Airlines flight from Stapleton International Airport in Denver to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, continuing to Philadelphia International Airport. On July 19, 1989, the DC-10 (registered as N1819U) serving the flight crash-landed at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa, after suffering a catastrophic failure of its tail-mounted engine due to an unnoticed manufacturing defect in the engine's fan disk, which resulted in...
I seem to recall reading that they subsequently presented the UA232 conditions to other pilots in simulator exercises, most resulting in far worse outcomes. I can’t find a cite for that though.
---
### Author:  [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2019, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/17 "2019-02-04T22:06:56Z")
> [@Velocity](#):
>
> Don’t airline pilots get tested twice a year in simulators for a panoply of emergency situations?
Yep.
There are a few scenarios which are standard in most simulator recurrent training events, such as the “V1 cut”, which is loss of an engine just after reaching decision speed during takeoff. Other scenarios are sometimes at the discretion of the instructor, or possibly the request of the crew being trained.
I just came out of recurrent two weeks ago. Among the emergency stuff we did this time around:
- Emergency descent from altitude due to smoke in the cockpit, including putting on the masks
- Aborted takeoff with an evacuation
- Several kinds of engine failures including fires, some with re-starts, most without
- A couple of no-flap landings (more of an abnormal than an emergency scenario). _But this turned out to be prescient because we had to execute one for real on my very first flight after training._
That’s in addition to the usual stuff - steep turns, stalls, circle-to-land at minimums, etc.
If I was king of the training world, I would like to do more scenarios that are not of the dire type. In real life, you’re probably more likely to experience an engine failure less dramatically than a V1 cut. More like, you notice the oil pressure starting to go down. You watch it a while, pull out the checklist, watch it some more before eventually having to shut it down as a precaution. But sim time is too valuable and scarce to run through that sort of thing. You generally work through that type of scenario during ground instruction.
Edit: Captains go twice a year. First officers usually go annually, but there are exceptions.
---
### Author:  [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2019, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/18 "2019-02-05T01:43:37Z")
> [@PastTense](#):
>
> But the tragedy has become a focus of intense interest and debate in aviation circles because of another factor: the determination by Boeing and the F.A.A. that pilots did not need to be informed about a change introduced to the 737’s flight control system for the Max, some software coding intended to automatically offset the risk that the size and location of the new engines could lead the aircraft to stall under certain conditions. That judgment by Boeing and its regulator was at least in part a result of the company’s drive to minimize the costs of pilot retraining. And it appears to have left the Lion Air crew without a full understanding of how to address a malfunction that seems to have contributed to the crash: faulty data erroneously indicating that the plane was flying at a dangerous angle, leading the flight control system to repeatedly push the plane’s nose down…
>
> Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually. That feature was disabled on the Max when M.C.A.S. was activated — another change that pilots were unlikely to have been aware of. After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when M.C.A.S. is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop so-called stabilizer runaway. The preliminary results of the investigation, based on information from the flight data recorder, suggested that the pilots of the doomed flight tried a number of ways to pull the nose back up as it lurched down more than two dozen times. That included activating switches on the control yoke that control the angle of the stabilizers on the plane’s tail — and when that failed to stop the problem, pulling back on the yoke.[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html)
How is that even legal? You make a change, and it sounds (to my not a pilot ears) as if it’s a fairly significant change in how the plane operates, and you _don’t tell the pilots flying the plane_? How is that not criminal negligence, at best?
---
### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2019, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/19 "2019-02-05T03:06:55Z")
IANAP, but apparently because the “button” option was always the proper procedure — the one in the checklist — and still is. The “pull back on the yoke” option was just a convenient alternative — until it wasn’t.
---
### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2019, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960/20 "2019-02-05T03:26:14Z")
Another example of pilots being unaware of subtle changes in a new 737 variant, leading to fatalities: [Kegworth air disaster - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lion-air-crash-similar-to-silk-air-185-murder-suicidel/823960.md?page=2)